The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ranks first among U.S. academic institutions recognized as "best places to work for postdocs," according to The Scientist magazine.
Joining Carolina in the top three slots for U.S. academic institutions were Washington University in St. Louis and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The new ranking, released Feb. 11, examined working conditions for postdoctoral fellows working in the life sciences as part of the magazine's third annual survey.
Other U.S. academic institutions listed were Michigan State University, fourth; Medical College of Wisconsin, fifth; University of Michigan, sixth; Virginia Commonwealth University, seventh; University of Alabama at Birmingham, eighth; Emory University, ninth; and the University of Kansas, 10th.
Carolina was listed sixth among all U.S. institutions, including government institutions and private research centers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency campus in Research Triangle Park topped that overall list, followed by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, National Cancer Institute in Maryland, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park.
More than 3,500 survey respondents rated a valuable training experience, access to research equipment and library resources and a good mentoring relationship as the factors contributing to a great workplace.
The magazine invited more than 40,000 individuals who registered at its Web site and identified themselves as a non-tenured life scientist working at a non-commercial research institution in the United States, Canada, Western Europe or Israel. Overall, the magazine evaluated the 125 U.S. institutions and 66 non-U.S. institutions that had five or more responses.